HAS FACEBOOK BECOME A TRAITOR TO THE TRUTH?

On October 28, 2002, 18-year-old college sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launches the online portal Facemash from his dorm room at Harvard. The site is intended to connect people to one another—and to help make the world a freer and more peaceful place. What no one could foresee: The site would become one of the greatest technological revolutions of the past 100 years—and the beginning of an unprecedented betrayal that would end up threatening that free and peaceful world 14 years later.

Nowadays Facemash is known as Facebook, and the social network has around 3 billion active monthly users. Zuckerberg went from college student to one of the world’s most powerful—and most dangerous— entrepreneurs. The reason: To increase his website’s advertising revenues, he proceeds to transform the social network into a news platform with the widest reach on the planet—even though it does not adhere to most journalistic standards or media laws.

Anybody can post a lie on Facebook and sell it as truth to billions—without veri cation or consequences. Within just a few years this attribute made Facebook a political playground for extremists, populists, lobbyists, and professional opinion makers. When it comes to informing people about politics, “Facebook has become a sewer of misinformation,” says Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. He is one of many experts who associate the election victory of in 2016 with a huge campaign of lies on Facebook. “Team Hillary” adopted this strategy as well—but without as much success as Trump’s team. In any event, studies show that the public was lied to on an unprecedented scale. In the days before the election, there were more fake news stories on Facebook than real news stories.

Zuckerberg is aware of the problem, but it has largely been ignored. Even the most blatant abuses haven’t been blocked—even though Facebook utilizes its algorithm to send its users personalized ads each day, demonstrating just how precisely it can lter and monitor its users’ activities. It’s a betrayal that Espen Egil Hansen, the editor in chief of Norway’s biggest newspaper, summarized in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg: “You’re the world’s most powerful editor. I think you are abusing your power.”

MARK ZUCKERBERG HARVARD CAMPUS 2002 FROM VISIONARY TO VILLAIN? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revolutionized the media with his brainchild. However, now the socialnetworking website is threatening to become the world’s biggest platform for the dissemination of fake news.